1. Field of the Invention
Systems and methods for ecommerce relating to customizable and personalizable products, in particular web based ecommerce systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the field of Internet ecommerce, it is desirable to enable users to easily define the desired configuration of an item or product they wish to buy. For example, a user, upon viewing a product of interest on an Internet website, using his or her web browser, may wish to evaluate various versions of the product that may have various, colors, designs, peripherals or other options, see what the product would look like and cost given the various options chosen, and then make an informed buying decision based upon this evaluation. Software (often web server and web browser software) that enables such experimentation is often called a “product configurator” or simply “configurator” software.
A number of high-end manufacturers and retailers have implemented such product configurators on their websites. The Nike corporation, for example, operates a tennis shoe configurator that allows potential customers to create their own customized tennis shoes by selecting the material and colors of the Nike “swoosh” logo, the material (e.g. suede, coated leather, mesh, or leather with graphics) of the accent, underlay, tip/heel/tongue of the shoe, as well as the shoe's lace color, midsole color, and toe bumper color. The website allows the user to view the final product with these various color selections, and either share the results with other users, save the results, or purchase the tennis shoe.
Although such product configurators give customers an unprecedented amount of design freedom, and also represent great product sales tools, prior art product configurators, such as the Nike configurator, were generally purpose built—i.e. custom designed for a specific product and a specific company, and thus were extremely expensive to develop. Such prior art purpose-built configurators also lacked standardization, because each generally had their own unique graphic user interface (GUI) and modes of use. Thus product configurators were generally reserved for large organizations or at least well financed organizations.
Prior art configurators are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,353,192, 7,584,155, 7,650,296; U.S. patent applications 20050102199, 20040113945, 20050027553, and 20030172003.